This invention relates to a bottle carrier formed of a plastic material in a construction such as to support two bottles by their necks and enable them to be carried as held parallelly to each other and, at the same time, prevented from directly colliding with and consequently inflicting breakage upon each other.
Bottle carriers adapted to hold in position a plurality of bottles by their necks and permit the bottles to be carried as suspended therefrom have already been known to the art in view of the disclosures such as of U.S. Pat. No. 3,003,805 and No. 3,633,962 and Japanese Patent Public Disclosure No. SHO 52(1977)-152397.
Such conventional bottle carriers are made of plastic materials. They are invariably designed to enable the bottles to be supported and held by the necks through effective use of the elasticity and recovering property of plastic materials. One common requirement to be fulfilled by all of them is that their retaining parts should be formed in an annular or curved shape having a diameter equal to or slightly smaller than the outside diameter of the necks of bottles so that the attachment of the carriers to the bottles is accomplished by having the retaining parts spread out radially enough to be slid past the brims of the bottles and, after passage over the brims, allowed to tighten themselves around the necks of bottles enough to combine the bottles into one portable bundle.
These conventional bottle carriers are provided with a certain degree of rigidity in order that they may allow the bottles to be carried as suspended securely from the aforementioned retaining parts which are wrapped around the necks of bottles. During the attachment of these carriers to the bottles, therefore, the retaining parts cannot be brought into contact with the necks of bottles unless they are spread out with considerably large strength. Conversely, during the detachment of these carriers from the bottles, because of the special design consideration paid to the prevention of accidental fall of bottles from the retaining parts while the bottles are in transit, the bottles will not readily come off the carriers unless they are pulled with much greater strength.
Generally, the bottle carriers of the construction described above are used more often than not be being provisionally mounted on the bottles at the time the bottles are packaged for shipment from the factory. Actually, this mounting work is carried out by mechanical means. The strength which is required in the attachment of the carriers to the bottles, therefore, does not matter much. Since the removal of the carriers from the bundled bottles is effected manually be consumers, however, great strength is required on the part of consumers. This inevitable exertion of strength renders the actual use of these conventional bottle carriers extremely inconvenient.